Dante's Francesca and Paolo - "she Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"

Vanni Fucci

Professor Alighieri

Freshman Foundations 100

28 September 1308

Dante's Francesca and Paolo: "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"

In Canto V of The Inferno, Dante offers what seems to be a sympathetic portrait of two medieval lovers caught and condemned after re-enacting a passionate scene from Arthurian Romance. A modern reader might well find the story of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta moving, especially when the narrator himself swoons with pity at the canto's end. It is true that in Dante's ethical scheme, the sin of Paolo and Francesca is not among the worst: the two lovers are guilty of "incontinence" rather than bestial intemperance, and the elegant, literary way in which they sin only increases our desire to excuse the sin itself. Even so, we should remember that in The Inferno, sinners experience God's Love as perpetual Justice. Our task as readers, Dante would surely say, is to align our will with God's plan, not to lament for the sinners. A thorough examination of two key sections in Canto VÐ'-Francesca's conversations with the narratorÐ'--will show that the Canto distances us from the narrator's empathetic reaction, asking us to move beyond our own pity and towards a just reflection upon the "misreading" that threatens to lead us into violation of the just commands of Dante's god.

Early on, Canto V certainly tempts us to pity Francesca and PaoloÐ'--the list of lost souls that Virgil offers to satisfy the narrator's curiosity from lines 52-68 evokes a literary tradition with which Dante must have been quite familiar: SemÐ"­ramis of Assyria, Cleopatra, Helen of Sparta, Paris of Troy, and Tristan of Romance fame are just a few among the countless lovers condemned to eternal buffeting by what Virgil calls "the hellish hurricane, which never rests, / [and] drives on the spirits with its violence" (30-31). The narrator knows these figures and their stories well; such stories are the lifeblood of epic and romance. Not even Virgil's stern explanation of SemÐ"­ramis' conduct and sentenceÐ'--"Her vice of lust became so customary that she made license licit in her laws" (56)Ð'--is enough to prevent the narrator from being seized by pity for the whole group as if from a force outside himself: "No sooner had I heard my teacher name / the ancient ladies and the knights, than pity / seized me, and I was like a man astray" (70-72). When Paolo and Francesca are borne into view, the narrator simply must speak with "those two who go together there / and seem so lightly carried by the wind" (73-74).

The initial conversation between the narrator and Francesca (who speaks for Paolo) consists in a finely told summary on her part and a response of "sorrow and [. . .] pity" (117) on the narrator's. As Francesca explains her downfall,

Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart,

took hold of him because of the fair body

taken from meÐ'--how that was done still wounds me.

Love, that releases no beloved from loving,

took hold of me so strongly through his beauty

that, as you see, it has not left me yet.

Love led the two of us unto one death. (100-06)

This explanation is moving, but it contains hints about why the narrator's response is too accepting, too sympathetic. First, Francesca speaks of love in a manner more pagan than ChristianÐ'--she tells us that love can "seize" the heart, much as the Greeks and Romans might say that Eros or Cupid has struck someone with his arrow, and implies that she and Paolo were powerless to free themselves from love's grasp. Francesca argues that her Paolo's attractive form struck her eyes with so much force that she could not have behaved otherwise than she did, with tragic result. The narrator, therefore, responds to an essentially pagan erotic and poetic tradition, one to which he feels strong ties thanks to his own poetic sensibilities and aspirations.

The narrator's strong interest in the psychological process by which Francesca and Paolo strayed from God's will leads to one final encounter. In that encounter, Francesca describes the process in a way that is both moving and yet austere, leaving no doubt that Canto V's main goal is to drive us through and beyond mere pity and towards an acceptance of the moral law that governs Dante's universe. Francesca explains that one day she and Paolo were reading about Sir Lancelot, and almost managed to get through the romantic story without going astray, when a brief moment too close to their own situation proved their undoing:

And time and time again that reading led

our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,

and yet one point alone defeated us.

When we had read how the desired smile

was kissed by one who was so true a lover,

this one, who never shall be parted from me,

while